Our client of the month for June 2022 is YMM, who has been a client of Benach Collopy since 2013 and sought and was granted citizenship this winter. In addition to being one of the loveliest people one could ever hope to meet, YMM is a Spanish national who worked with BC Partner Dree Collopy to seek lawful permanent resident status along with her husband. She and her husband were granted green cards in 2015 based on an approved extraordinary ability (EB-1) petition.
Lady and her two boys!
For our client of the month for May we have a perfect Client for Mother’s Day! Here we celebrate a woman who did what mothers do best- protect her children and create a better life for them. We are happy to share that Lady and her sons, Diego and Juan, were granted asylum! Ava Benach represented them before the immigration court in New York.
This month, we are so pleased to celebrate our client Edimilson Mendes Ferreira, who just won his case to remain in the United States with his family after years of waiting in Immigration Court.
Edimilson has lived in the United States for nearly two decades. In that time, he has raised two daughters and become a grandfather to three US citizen grandchildren. He has started his own successful housecleaning business, which he has now run for over a decade, servicing clients throughout the greater Washington region.
Azeb and Dree Collopy
We are happy to once again begin our client of the month series with a Dree Collopy victory! This month, we celebrate our client Azeb, who was granted asylum from Ethiopia after a long battle to obtain the safety in this country that she deserves. Azeb fled to the US after she had been wrongfully imprisoned in Ethiopia for standing up to government harm to journalists and political opponents.
Benach Collopy LLP is a nationally renowned, full-service immigration and nationality law firm in Washington, DC. The firm is one of the nation’s leading voices for immigrants’ rights and its attorneys are among the most respected immigration lawyers in the nation. Benach Collopy represents a wide range of clients, providing innovative, zealous representation to immigrants and their families while maintaining the highest standards of ethics and client service.
¡Hola, amigos! Soy una de las paralegales de BC, Diana. Como una Latina profesional de inmigración, quería compartir algunas ideas con nuestros amigos y clientes de BC sobre algunos problemas preocupantes que he visto en nuestra comunidad latina, y sobre formas en que podemos ser mejores aliados para nuestros hermanos Negros. Las muertes de George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery y Breonna Taylor son actos de asesinato horribles, y es parte de nuestra responsabilidad como inmigrantes de defender a nuestros hermanos Negros contra el genocidio de ellos en los Estados Unidos de la misma manera que nos enfrentamos al genocidio en la frontera.
This is a special blog post by our Paralegal Diana Mateo, who has been inspired to write by the Black Lives Matter movement to speak out about anti-blackness in the Latino community. A version in Spanish is available here.
Hi friends, this is Benach Collopy paralegal Diana. As a Latina immigration professional, I want to share some thoughts with our BC friends and clients on some troubling issues I’ve seen in our non-Black Latinx community and on ways we can be better allies to our Black siblings.
One morning in April of 2015, we had the honor of meeting Selamawit Chale for the first time. She came to our office, broken, hurting, and terrified, but at the same time, her inner strength was palpable. We learned that Selam was once a bright and hopeful young woman, anxious to make a difference in the world and to contribute to her communities; however, traumatic events in her childhood, followed by years of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her husband had silenced her.
Our May 2018 clients of the month are Marcelle de Lima and Luciano da Silva. Marcelle and Luciano are from Brazil and they came to the United States after the Brazilian economy started to decline in 2001 and they lost their jobs. When they came to the U.S., neither could speak English and they had to start their lives over from scratch. They were resourceful and determined to build a stable and happy life for themselves and their future children.
We are thrilled with our April 2018 Clients of the Month, Aldemar Segundo and Susan Matos Segundo. Aldemar became a permanent resident in March 2018 and can live securely with his U.S. citizen wife, Susan, and their two children. Aldemar’s improbable journey is one of the most inspiring cases we have been a part of.
When DACA was announced, Aldemar was like lots of other Central American immigrants without status in the U.S.